


Harsh Climate

by maqcy



Series: Whumptober 2018 [21]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: (Spoilers in tags ahead), Android Revolution (Detroit: Become Human), Androids, Angst, Blood Loss, Blue Blood, Deviant Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Deviants (Detroit: Become Human), Dismemberment, Fluffy Ending, Gen, Gunshot Wounds, Hank Anderson & Connor Friendship, Hank Anderson Swears, Heavy Angst, POV Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Post-Detroit: Become Human (Video Game), Prompt Fic, Protective Hank Anderson, Thirium (Detroit: Become Human), Whump, Whumptober 2018, android anatomy, detroit: become human au, harsh climate, injured Connor, so so late
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-10-06 05:56:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17339819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maqcy/pseuds/maqcy
Summary: Connor goes to investigate some suspicious movement and gets blown up. Lucky that Hank is there to save his sorry ass.





	Harsh Climate

**Author's Note:**

> Ah look its 2019 and i'm still doing these :D I found 'harsh climate' really hard to fill though. I initially just went with snow/cold but ended up writing myself into a corner. I then tried rainy/cold but that one would have ended up far too long so I abandoned that too. So welcome to Harsh Climate III! Got there eventually.
> 
> This is an AU where the air is toxic and the androids were used to do things outside that the humans can't without special breathing suits. After the revolution androids and humans live apart by mutual agreement except that some humans don't seem to be abiding by the agreement... (This is mostly explained in the fic).
> 
> Huge thanks to Imperial_Dragon as always, who is a wonderful beta. All remaining errors mine. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

Connor trudged forwards through the oppressive heat, sand and fine grit hissing in his ears as particles hit his audio processorsNorth had been working on filtering the noise out but she hadn’t succeeded yet.

“Status?” Simon’s voice came through his earpiece. Connor didn’t like having information beamed directly into his head anymore, not now that he had the choice, and they’d worked around it by fitting him with an earpiece instead.

Connor relayed his co-ordinates and what he was seeing back to the group, keeping his eyes fixed on his surroundings as he continued to trudge through the sand, the wind battering at him in fractious gusts.

Connor hadn’t thought he’d get to travel to see somewhere like this.

This desert, bleak and too hot for humans, was android territory now by international agreement and yet their guard drones had picked up unusual movement on their side of the border and, after confirming that it was humans, Connor had headed over to investigate, against Marcus’s wishes.

He was still five-hundred yards from the border when an odd, high whine was followed by a punch to his gut, knocking him back a step. His gaze snapped downwards. _What the hell-_

His automatic defence reflexes took over and he dropped to his stomach, knocking his chin on the sand and clicking his teeth together sharply. His hand dropped to his stomach and came back slick and blue with his blood. Pain began to radiate through his abdomen so that just breathing became excruciating and he pressed his forehead to the rough sand with a wounded groan as he tried to just _think_ under the crushing weight of it. It had seemed like a good idea to get the extra pain/pleasure sensors that he’d lacked before he turned deviant, but right now it felt like he couldn’t breathe for the agonising, breathless pain from the hole in his abdomen.

Warnings began to flit across his vision as he stared blankly at the blood smeared across his fingers, his breathing fast and shallow as his internal fans kicked up a gear, trying and failing to cool his systems. He _couldn’t_ have been shot; he was wearing body armour, and yet he _had_ been shot, the bullet managing to penetrate the armour that North had said would block anything, and now he was bleeding all over the sand.

“…warnings, Connor, what’s going on?”

Connor relayed his location, the approximate size of the bullet that had shoved its way inside of him, and rate of blood loss, as best as his overheating system could calculate it.

“Dammit, Connor,” Simon muttered. “I’m sending reinforcements out, okay? Don’t get any closer, you hear me? I _know_ you, just stay where you are, or retreat if you can. Connor?”

“Understood,” Connor said, even as he was raising his head, flinching at the pain but trying to see who the fuck had shot him. There was a black shimmer on the top of the nearest dune but as Connor was trying to focus his far-range optics to figure out what it was, there was that same high whine followed by a violent splutter of fine sand not a meter from Connor’s head as another bullet pocked the ground.

“Fuck!” Connor spat as he awkwardly shuffled backwards on his belly, gritting his teeth at the pain that sparked through him at the movements, unable to breathe right. He reckoned the bullet had perforated something around his fans and the thirium was clogging up their movement. There wasn’t anything to do but try to retreat, dragging himself backwards on his stomach, even though he knew he was probably getting all manner of filth and sand into the bullet wound. But, as another bullet _thwacked_ into the sand on his left, Connor didn’t give a damn and just focused on scrabbling backwards faster.

 ** _Ten percent blood loss, internal bleeding, punctured digestive cavity, grazed thirium pump regulator-_** The warnings blared at him, even as he kept flicking them away.

He managed another few meters before his nerve gave out and he staggered to his feet to make a run for it. Only, he hadn’t taken into account how uncoordinated he would be; the blood loss stealing some of the turgidity from his legs and leaving them feeling weak and alien, barely able to support him.

So he just staggered as well as he could manage, gasping, before he heard a whistling behind him and turned, some piece of code or sixth sense telling him to be afraid, only to see the black, blurred shape of a fist-sized missile heading straight for him, far too fast for him to get out the way of.

And yet, he ran anyway, because he didn’t want to die goddammit, and because it gave him the extra second needed to relay the scant information he’d gained to Simon; that they had armour-piercing weaponry, that they might be firing from the top of a dune, that they had missiles. That one of those missiles was probably just about to kill him.

It took scant moments, the whistling getting louder, and then Connor was aware, briefly, of his chest feeling crushed and the sense of weightlessness as he was tossed into the air, before his systems shut down and everything went black.

*

Connor awoke to silence and warnings blinking at him.

**_Forty-percent blood loss, critical damage to right optical unit, right and left lower limb components missing, structural damage in biocomponents #2886, #4507_ \- **

Connor shoved the warnings away and opened his eyes. Or his left one, because his right wasn’t functioning and wouldn’t open. He tried and failed to sit up, blinking grit out of his eye as he twisted to look around and then moaned softly at the whole-body flicker of pain the movement elicited. He glanced down at his stomach and found his chest bare, the white of his interfacing showing through in ugly gashes. A blue-stained bandage was wound tightly around his midsection where he’d been shot. Connor tried again to move, only to freeze as he stared down at himself. His legs- they-

Hearing a noise to his right, Connor look sharply up and, through his fuzzy left eye he saw a man, a human, looking at him.

“Wh-where,” Connor tried to say, looking back to where his legs should have been, but weren’t. The jagged ends were bound in bloody bandages, the same as his stomach; his right leg cut off at the mid-thigh and his left at the knee. “Fuck,” he muttered, before turning to snarl at the human. “What did you do?” he yelled. His voice sounded off; his right ear wasn’t working properly.

“Calm down,” the broad-shouldered man said, his grey hair loose around his face. He had his hands up in the universal gesture of pacification. Connor was silent for a second as he reconnected with Simon and reeled off his location (about half a mile away from where he’d been shot). Simon came back instantly to say that reinforcements were coming.

Then Connor refocused on the human to glare at him, his fingers curling around the edges of the table he seemed to be lying on. The room was bright and clean, but spartan and Connor didn’t pay it much attention, his vision grey around the edges. If the human was here, then the air must be filtered, and yet Connor knew that this wasn’t one of the sheltered communities that most of the humans lived in. So some private homestead, with its own filtration system.

“Where the hell are my legs?” he snapped. “What did you do with them?”

“I didn’t do anything,” the man said, irritation thickening his low voice. He was cleaning his blue-stained hands on a rag. “You got yourself fucking blown up and, like an idiot, I dragged your sorry, blue ass out of there.” Connor stared at him, trying to analyse the man’s emotions, but his systems weren’t working properly and he gave up. Talking and connecting with Simon were taking up most of his processing capacity, although he seemed to be breathing better now, so at least he wasn’t overheating. The man continued, “The only reason you’re awake right now is ‘cus you’ve got my dog’s spare heart inside you.”

Connor blinked. “I- what?”

The man grinned suddenly. “Sumo. My dog. You’re fucking lucky that I had a spare sitting around, but-” Connor tried again to sit up, only to almost topple off the table. The man swore and rushed over to grab his shoulders, steadying him. “As I was gonna say,” he said irritably, “you’ll be dizzy, ‘cus it isn’t a big enough pump for you, even without your- you know.” He gestured towards Connor’s missing legs and Connor glared at him. The man squinted and then grudgingly asked, “You alright?”

“No,” Connor snapped, but he had to admit, if only to himself, that the human was probably telling the truth. He grudgingly relayed to Simon that the reinforcements weren’t to shoot the human, that he was probably an ally. “Your dog’s an android?”

“Yeah,” the man said, before turning his head to call, “Sumo!”

After a moment, a large-eyed, lumbering _thing_ padded into the bright room and Connor stared down at it. Thick lines of drool hung down from either side of its maw. It looked up at Connor with dark, drooping eyes.

“That’s not a dog,” Connor said.

The man laughed. “Sure he is,” he said fondly. “Modelled him on a Saint Bernard. He drools joint lubricant fuckin’ everywhere, I haven’t managed to figure that out yet. If he has less joint lube, then he goes about creaking like a goddamn door in the wind. So I’m stuck with the drooling.” The man lifted his hands in exasperation and Connor frowned at him, wondering who the hell this human was, that lived right on the human/android boundary and had built an android dog. And who knew enough about android anatomy to install a new thirium pump.

“Who are you?” he said. “Why were you in our territory? Who shot me?”

The man huffed. He was still holding Connor upright. “My name’s Hank. You’re one of those jacked-up weather-monitoring models – Connor, right? Unless you’ve changed your name since the revolution.” He cocked an eyebrow.

“I haven’t.”

The man, Hank, nodded. “An’ I was on your territory because you looked like you needed a hand. And as to who shot you, I dunno,” he paused, considering. “I reckon they’re looking for oil, though. I’d put money on it.”

Connor’s eyebrows shot up. “There’s no oil,” he said. The humans had been extremely reluctant to give up any of their dwindling fossil fuel sources.

“Yeah, well, recent surveys beg to differ,” Hank said.

Connor frowned at him. “How do you know?” he asked suspiciously.

Hank shrugged. “Just heard it around. I’ve been hearing the fuckers scurrying back and forth along the border all week.”

Connor shook his head. “This is an act of war,” he muttered. “They’re breaking the treaty by shooting me.”

He felt the flinch of Hank’s shock through Hank’s hands on his shoulders. “You’re not fucking gonna call for war over this are you?”

Connor shrugged and then regretted it, cringing at the pain. “I don’t know,” he said irritably. “It’ll be up to Marcus. He won’t want to look like he’s letting the humans- you guys just go about killing us, though. I almost _died_ , for God’s sake,” his voice cracked as he said it and he blinked, pushing the raw fear away to deal with later. He focused back on Hank instead. “Is that why you intervened?” he asked. “Because you didn’t want to risk breaking the treaty?”

“Nah,” Hank said, shooting him an odd look, before his face hardened. “Is that what you do when you see people blown up? Think about what you’ve got to gain from helping?”

“I don’t know,” Connor said, equally sharp. “I don’t see people getting blown up very often.”

Hank cracked a harsh smile before he shook his head and stepped back. “You should call-”

“I did,” Connor said.

“Good,” Hank said. He paused, clearly thinking. “What were you doing so near the border?”

“Investigating,” Connor said.

Hank grunted and nodded and then a heavy pounding on the door made both of them startle. Connor glanced at Hank, who looked hard at him.

“I really fucking hope your friends aren’t gonna shoot me,” he said.

The banging continuing and Connor just smiled. “You should probably get that,” he said. Hank let go of him and, unable to hold himself up, Connor sank back down to lie on his back as Hank went to get the door. He tried not to think about how his legs were now scattered bits of shrapnel half a mile away, rather than attached to him as they were supposed to be. He felt sick, but it probably just thirium sitting inside him in places it wasn’t supposed to be.

Hank must have opened the door because North and Luther came rushing in, crowding over him and Connor’s face split into a smile to see them.

“Hi,” he said. Luther grabbed him into a hug while North glared like she wanted to hit him.

“You fucking idiot,” she snapped, before she stilled, taking him in properly. “What happened to your-” she started, before she seemed to answer her own question and they all stared down at where Connor’s legs ought to be.

Connor drew a tight smile over his face, hiding the fear that seemed to have settled in his punctured stomach. “I hope we’ve got spares,” he said.

“I’m sure there’s loads in the store,” Luther said. North’s lips were pressed together and Connor remembered several overheard conversations about their depleted supply of blue blood – the humans wouldn’t trade – and he wasn’t so certain.

“Hey, Connor,” Hank’s voice broke in. “You want to tell your asshole friend over here not to stare a hole in me?”

Connor looked over to see that an android he didn’t know – an associate of North’s, he thought – was glaring at Hank derisively, their hand on their weapon.

“Stand down, Al,” North said and the android tensed, but did as they were asked. Hank sauntered towards Connor, apparently ignoring how the androids in the room, even easy-going Luther, bristled at his approach. The thing that Hank called a dog stayed slumped on its hindquarters, drooling.

“You gonna live then?” Hank said.

Connor was tempted to glare at him but refrained. “Thanks to you, I probably will,” he said stiffly.

Hank’s mouth twitched up. “You’re welcome,” he said. “You reckon I could come see that Marcus guy, talk him out of starting another bloody war?” Hank’s voice was light but his eyes were hard and drawn. Connor considered him, eyebrows raised.

“No,” North snapped. Connor looked at her and she glared at him. “ _No_ , Connor. How do you know that it wasn’t this asshole that blew off your fucking legs in the first place?”

Hank made a disgruntled noise and Connor ignored him. “This is a separate homestead, right? I bet he hasn’t got the tech for those kind of weapons,” he said, “but I don’t have the processing power right now to check. But look, why would he try and kill me and then drag me back here and patch me up? I reckon he saved me from overheating, or just straight-up bleeding out, North. Why shouldn’t he talk to Marcus?”

North’s lip twisted. “Because he could try to assassinate him, that’s fucking why, Connor.”

Connor exhaled on a sigh. He was in pain, one eye wasn’t working, his ear was beeping at him and he just wanted to get his fucking legs back, drink about a gallon of blue blood and then power down for a week.

“He saved my life,” he said tiredly. “Don’t we owe him a favour?”

North looked unmoved. “You can talk to Marcus about setting up a phone call. But that’s it.”

“Fine,” Connor relented. “Can we go now?” He knew he sounded plaintive but he really just wanted to get home, away from strange humans and sand.

“Yeah,” Luther said. “Let’s get you out of here.”

“See you, then,” Hank said, as North and Luther were lifting Connor up, with Connor gritting his teeth.

“Bye,” Connor managed, before they carried him out and Connor dropped his head to rest of North’s shoulder. As they were leaving, he caught a glimpse of the ridiculous hunk of metal that Hank had called his dog and a smile twitched over his lips.

“You might as well power down,” North told him.

“We’ll get you home,” Luther promised.

“I know,” Connor said. “Thanks for coming to get me.”

“Last fucking time,” North muttered at the same time that Luther said, “Anytime.”

Connor was smiling as he powered down, trusting his friends to get him home.

**Author's Note:**

> So any thoughts?? 
> 
> Did you think Connor and Hank fitted canon or were they a bit OC? What did you think of the AU? What did you think of AndroidDog!Sumo??
> 
> All comments welcome as always :)
> 
> (Ps. if anyone wants to read a really good DBH fic, i'd really reccomend not_poignant's 'Eversion' fic, which has Hank as an android and Connor as human. It's full of wonderful angsty plottiness - but do check the warnings first!!)
> 
> come chat to me at maqcyloup on Tumblr, my anon asks are always open :)


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